


Legacy of the Wolf

by BrokenPen



Series: Legacy of the Wolf [1]
Category: Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-06-07
Updated: 2012-09-01
Packaged: 2017-11-07 03:35:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/426506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrokenPen/pseuds/BrokenPen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The scion of a forgotten House is dragged into war, while he tries to cling to his humble roots. Prophecy, Fate, and Tragedy drag him into a conflict that has been a long time in the making. AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue (The Peddler's New Role)

Something was changing.

Was it himself?

No. He was sure he couldn't change. Couldn't be changed. He was done changing. But something bubbled. Seethed. In his consciousness. A new awareness. He sensed…others. Others?

He was not alone in existence! Of course! He had known that, but still it came as an epiphany. Not just he, but….what? What else?

Mankind. Those scurrying sacks of meat and inadequacy were still there. That was it. He had been blind to their existence? They had been free? Scurrying along in insignificance while he had wallowed alone in the dark?

That was decidedly unfair. He had worked so very hard, for such a very long time, and had become so very much more than any human could imagine. And he was here alone in the dark? They free to run about? LONGING!

Oh, how he longed. A longing that ran through his entire being. It pulled at every expanse of his mind! He longed for…for….

What did every bit of his being yearn for? He could feel desire down to the core of himself. But he couldn't remember what that desire pulled him toward… He wanted…yearned for…longed for…needed…revenge!

REVENGE! Oh, how he longed for his revenge! Mmmm. Even the word was delightfully sweet. Revenge. He savored the word, savored the meaning, savored the anticipation. Oh, revenge would be amazing. Beautiful, bloody, horrible, nasty, sexy revenge. Revenge to pay for his suffering. Revenge to pay for his time lost wallowing in the dark. When he got his hands on…

Insane laughter burst forth. Hands! Ha! He could smell the insanity in his laughter. He reveled in the comfortable skittering madness that was his own. He wanted hands to wrap around throats. He wanted hands to grip his dagger and slice the living organs from their places…but the thought of being bound to a body again, to a single solid form, was so alien to him now that he would as soon give up his revenge. REVENGE! He began to stretch his consciousness back…out…forward. He would have his revenge on….he strained to remember…

He was formless. He could hear nothing and everything. There was nothing to see and he saw all of it.

"Blood streaming, sweet crunching, bones crunching", one of his voices purred. They missed crunching, grinding, snapping bones, and yelling, screaming, crying terror.

Dark, so dark. His place was dark. All of his souls liked the dark, which suited. He could not leave his dark place, and it could not leave him. He floated through black night screaming, howling, dancing, gnashing, crying, raging, dying, killing. He stopped.

He smelled blood, tasted flesh. Skin to plait and eyes to cry. He tasted it on the air. He floated toward the living flesh. Much flesh, strip and braid. Many bones, crush and grind. His voices rose in discordant chorus. He could feel their terror ahead of him. His souls boiled into a frenzy. His voices sang their song as they began to feed:

"Flesh so fine, fine to tear, to gnash the skin; skin to to strip, to plait, so nice to plait the strips, so nice, so red the drops that fall; blood so red, so red, so sweet; sweet screams, pretty screams, singing screams, scream your song, sing your screams…"

He remembered now. That was a part of him just as Shai'tan was a part just as Mashadar was a part. He wasn't Shai'tan or Machin Shin or Mashadar, they were all gone. He was more. And once he had Rand al'Thor to himself, al'Thor would find out just how much more. How that name hounded him…al'Thor. The one responsible for all of it…al'Thor. Rand al'Thor will be hounded. Rand al'Thor will be scourged and flayed and kept alive just long enough to watch everyone that he loved treated with similar courtesies! Oh how he longed for it! Rand al'Thor was going to…Rand al'Thor was… al'Thor…was…was DEAD! !

A howl issued forth from the prison. The being that howled did not realize yet that it was indeed a prisoner. The being with no name howled with pure rage: a howl that broke some men's minds and shook the mountains of the world. He had no name because he had moved so far beyond Padan Fain that it would be ridiculous to associate them, and he howled because he had no revenge now.

He stopped raging. It may have lasted only a moment or possibly it stretched through eons; time was no longer, to him, what it had been. He had been robbed. His revenge had been stolen from him. AL'THORRRR! He had been there. He had arrived at Shayol Ghul in time. How had this happened? His change had taken years flowing upon years, he knew that not only was the so-called Dragon dead, but the grandchildren of his grandchildren's grandchildren were dust by now. The entire world was going to pay him what he was owed! The suffering! The glorious torment! He felt a quivering anticipation. Without having a physical form he needed to find new ways to exert his will. The world would learn suffering as he learned to deliver it to them…The nameless prisoner began to study those others that he had sensed.

There seemed to be several groups of other being he could sense, each further from him than the last. Further was an insufficient term on this plane he now occupied, physical distance was meaningless. The last group existed further from his existence than the first group. The beings closest to his existence seemed to float in dull darkness, while gradually each group showed more light, the light seeming to come from within themselves and at the same time suffusing them from one to the other so that they appeared to reflect the light from each other. The smallest group, which lay so far away from him that he did not think he could reach them with any amount of effort, was so bright that he cringed when he focused on them. The light came from everywhere around them and from inside of them at such intensity that it threatened to blast all of the darkness away from everywhere. Light. Blinding. Horrible. He stretched toward those terrible bright formless beacons that disrupted his night. He would crush those first. Crush and grind and tear and rip. They weren't many, compared to those groups that came closer and closer to his plane. Several hundred stars outshining the millions and millions of lesser lights. Grasped and fell short. Again he stretched his being forth, and met resistance this time. There was a painfully violent wall of nothingness between he and those few, most brilliant stars. He was aware of them, surrounding him, on the fringes of his universe. But he was incapable of snuffing out the lights. He lashed out in fury at those dim lightless forms around him. Viciously crushing hundreds of them he delighted to see that they ceased to exist. He studied these. These were his. These he had the power to destroy, banish, crush and grind! They each pulsed with feral rage; touching one of them with his consciousness he found that he was caressing the soul, the soul, of some inhuman thing. It was familiar, and yet new. He could get a sense of this things self-image and it was some sort of huge animal. Hairy and fanged and horned and beaked. He began to crush this thing out of existence as he had the others when he stopped himself, a memory rising from his immortal depths, a memory of his mortal past. This was a trolloc! His old friends. He laughed madly in humor and excitement and hate and rage. The trolloc in his grasp quivered uncontrollably; inspecting it again he realized that the thing had gone mad. It must have not enjoyed meeting its new master. He thought about tearing one of the trolloc's arms off and the dark soul jerked violently. He imagined snapping a hoof off of its leg and he could hear the tormented howling that issued forth. He knew that somewhere on another plane of existence that Trolloc was in a blind frenzy, feeling every whim that flittered across his own consciousness. Reveling in the horror he released the beast and watched it continue to quiver and shake. He wondered idly if there had ever been a truly insane trolloc before. There was one now.

Those beyond this first group he found to be the souls of men. At first his excitement was unbounded. Even at discovering that the faint illumination in these souls offered some resistance to his will, he found he could still torture them, and ultimately could even destroy them utterly. Eventually he realized that these were the souls of the already dead. And while crushing a human soul out of existence, ripping it from the Wheel forever was gratifying, he wanted the living to feel his retribution. He wanted to rape the world of life, not just the world of death. The souls past the souls of the dead, but just before those disgustingly brilliant stars just out of his reach, were the souls of the living. The light from within these was almost unbearable and he began to destroy these souls and found himself rebuffed. The light that so annoyed him seemed to encase and protect these souls, he couldn't even touch them. The blasted Light held back his touch! In a furious and hate filled tantrum he laid about him destroying the souls of the dead and of trollocs alike. Crushing souls, tearing souls apart, burning souls to ethereal ash that blew away on the winds of nothingness.

Stopping himself before he destroyed everything that he had any power over, he caressed the trollocs gently stoking their fear. He spoke to each and every one of his trollocs that still existed.

"Come to me my children. Come back home to the black mountain. Bring your females to the slopes, and birth your young in my presence. Come, and after you obey me, you will feast on the flesh of Man."


	2. News From the Village

Wyland fished his kerchief out of his pocket and mopped the droplets of sweat from his brow before they could fall to the sheet below and wreak havoc on his tallies. Tallies were important. Wyland was a tallyer. A figurer. A thinker. Six days until the merchants arrived at Ni'Baras Stand to begin bargaining. With one day accounted for travel, that left him with five days to finish the harvest. It had taken Jorle and him a full week to harvest the four fields they had finished so far, with five of barley yet to reap. The half-a-field-a-day pace he and his son had settled into was going to be too slow by half.  
  
Chin in hand, considering the numbers before him, he growled unconsciously. Wyland had never heard it in himself, but when he growled in anger or frustration, he sounded fully as fierce as his father had. He cut off his growl as he heard his son approach and turned to look at him. He thrust out the sheet of flimsy paper that he had used to scrawl out his figures and sums.  
  
"Jorle, tell me what this means, son." He fixed his son's eyes with a searching gaze, continuing his scrutiny even after Jorle tore his eyes away to look at the paper still held before him.  
  
Jorle Ibara was already taller than most of the men in Fifthland, almost tall enough to look Wyland in the eye. His shoulders were as broad as his father's as well but he hadn't filled out with the muscle of manhood yet. The curly light-brown hair that was currently dripping with the sweat of a long day in the field lacked only for the touches of gray that had crept into Wyland's own curly mop over the last few seasons. Wyland himself had brown eyes so dark as almost to be black, but Jorle had been blessed with his mother's striking blue eyes.  
  
More than a few of the village girls stopped what they were doing to stare when Jorle trailed his father into the village on occasion. Jorle always seemed befuddled when his father started chuckling every time they entered the village. Wyland smiled openly at his son now, appreciating that innocence that he missed in himself, that innocence that he would not take back for all the gold of the Aiel.  
  
"It means Ma and the girls are going to have to postpone their weaving and help bring in the harvest." Jorle said after a quick consideration of the numbers dangling from Wyland's outstretched hand. "Ma's going to be disappointed Da, but I think Avily and Nandra will be excited to switch chores."  
  
"Why do these numbers mean that?"  
  
"Well, according to this, it looks like we'll need to harvest twice as fast as we have been all week."  
  
"Good son. Good." The hint of a grin still held on his face: he had plenty of reasons to be proud of his only son. "What else? Couldn't you and I just pick up the slack?"  
  
"We could move that fast Da, you and I," Jorle said thoughtfully, "but I don't think we could keep it up for five days…after the seven we've just put in." Jorle looked up then, blue eyes meeting brown. Such contrasting eyes in such similar faces, "Maybe we could do it at that, Da; we've outstripped ourselves past believing before."  
  
"I'm glad you believe in what we can accomplish together, son, but you were closer to truth in the former than the later." Folding the paper and slipping it into his belt pouch he slapped a hand on Jorle's shoulder and, leaving it there, turned him toward the farm house to head home. "Anything more?"  
  
"I think we could probably work a little faster and just bring the girls out with us." The boy paused then, glancing uncertainly at Wyland, "I think we could leave Ma to her weaving and still get done." As he finished each word came out with more confidence.  
  
"Good job boy, all angles. That is the direction to look at any situation from." Meeting eyes once more, Wyland continued as they walked, "I'm glad that you can see beyond what you're told and find your own way. But I'll tell you why I'm going to ask your mother to put down her weaving and help us reap—against my own good sense of self-preservation: You, Avily, Nandra, and I could get the barley in if you and I worked faster and the girls worked as fast as they could. But, working as fast as we can against a deadline will make us sloppy. Better I apologize to Darra later, because her sure hand will let us do the job right." Looking over at his son he could see the lesson hitting its mark. "She won't like it, but she knows I wouldn't ask it, if it wasn't what the family needs."  
  
Stepping out of the rows of barley, they entered the clearing that surrounded their family home. The Ibara farm was one of the largest in the Fifthland, and had been for generations. The farm's proximity to the Forrest of Mists always kept Ibara folk wary, but Wyland's father had told him that was what kept the Ibaras strong and watchful. There was an apple orchard surrounding the west side of the farmhouse, an orchard that was never harvested. Generations of Ibaras had been buried there and no one but Ibaras would ever eat an Ibara apple.  
  
East of the cottage stood a large pen where the sheep stood bleating in ignorance, attached to the sheep-pen was a barn that had been repaired and rebuilt more times than Wyland could imagine. Between the house and the Ibara men, on the southern side of the home, was a garden. On the north side of the cottage ran Whitechild road. According to oldwives in the Fifthland, children clothed in white had fled along that road to safety long ago while the men and women of the Fifth had stood against evil. No one knew what evil, or why their children had been cloaked all in white, but the road had been called that since before Wyland's greatfather's father's time, and maybe longer.  
  
Opening the back door of the farmhouse, Wyland found his wife bending down to pull a loaf of bread out of the brick oven that his father had built for his mother. He thought about sending Jorle on an errand that would leave him alone with Darra for a few Light-blessed moments, but as Avily came into the kitchen carrying a pot full of water he knew it was pointless. The farmer walked over to his wife and kissed her lightly on the cheek. "Hello Light of my Heart."  
  
"Hello boys." She still smiled at the sight of him, after all the years since they had said their vows before the Light. "How is the harvest going?"  
  
"Well enough Darra, well enough." The look he gave her said there was more to say for when they were alone. She only nodded at his words, but he was sure that she already knew what he had left unsaid. Avily had set down the pot and was smiling to see him as well. He took two steps and scooped her up into a spinning hug. "And hello my daughter! What have you done today, my dear?"  
  
"I sat at a loom all day Da." Her dark brown eyes were so large and beautiful that Wyland couldn't help but smiling at her.  
  
"All day, hmm?" Darra said from behind him. "All day at the loom may have been trying, but two hours weaving and the rest of the day dreaming and chattering should be nothing to speak of."  
  
Chuckling, Wyland hugged Avily again before releasing her. Avily had only seen fifteen summers, but soon the Ladies Council would allow her to unbraid her long black hair and he would have to start turning away suitors every day. She was already taller than her mother and had a face that lit up a room. And a smile that lit up the entire village.  
  
Avily was carefree, and her joy seeped into everyone around her. She was a special girl, and everyone in the village knew it. She seemed to know it too. She never really shirked her chores, but she was far from diligent. She also knew the effect she had on boys, and on her father for that matter, and used it to get what she wanted. She wasn't selfish exactly…she just always seemed to get what she wanted. She was a blessing and at the same time she often frustrated her mother. When Wyland was sure he had found the right young man, one he was sure deserved her, she would make the lucky boy very happy. And she would make sure that the boy made her very happy.  
  
"Where is my other daughter?"  
  
"Nandra is still at the loom." Darra couldn't hide the approval in her tone. Wyland didn't really think she was trying to. "Wyland, Parn Alver sent Bant over after they all got back  
  
from Ni'Baras Stand today to tell us that there is a stranger in the village asking questions after a Fifthlander who spent his youth fighting in outland armies then disappeared quite some time back." She never looked up from the pot of water that she was now adding things into for the soup.  
  
"Apparently nobody's been able to help this stranger find who he is looking for, although Bant said he gave a very detailed description of you."


End file.
